Made it to Jakarta and without incident

Plan worked like a charm.  It helped that the cats were in the spirit of this scheme and remained quiet…until we boarded, that is!  Meowwww.  Needless to say Neal and I were sweating through every checkpoint of our journey.   Having left the hotel early, and with a swift passing through security and immigration, we had plenty of time and now relaxed enough to enjoy Korean culture at the airport!  We now have 2 more to add to our collection of Korean masks.  If you have a choice in transit, opt for Seoul!

At the moment, we have one full day of our Indonesian Adventure underway!  As I lay at the pool between our orientation and our happy hour noticing our lush and lovely environment, comes across a reminder that we don’t really yet know what lies beyond our walled world of the Shangri-la.  

Tales from our orientation suggest the struggles of the city are outweighed by the ability to ‘always find a way to get things done’ followed by ‘pay your driver well’!   We are already believers of that, too.  A bit of greasing the wheels with quarantine, aka copi money (‘coffee money’) will ensure H and G will exit their required 14 days stay in a reputed flea and tick infested confine in a matter of 4 days.  It’s no chump change tho, and with the Muslim Holiday Eid Al Fitri (?) where 3 million Jakartans escape the city to their family homestead bringing their riches to share, there apparently wasn’t much room for negotiation; everyone’s gotta take their cut always, but now they need to bring it home.

Since traffic is horrendous, and an hour break in orientation doesn’t afford time enough to deliver this agreed ‘copi money’…the way to get this payment made is through someone else’s driver!  Drivers apparently are every expat’s right-hand man.  Someone else’s driver will soon be getting our iphones unlocked and outfitted with a sim card!  Neal and I are rethinking our commitment to forego a car/driver to save a few hundred bucks; that might be money well spent on some extra freedom and knowledge of the city workings.  A driver isn’t just a driver here.